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Comment by oinksoft | Hacker News Reader

Let's not pretend that Google's open source products in any way follow an open development process. Do you notice anything in common about the recent committers?

http://code.google.com/p/dart/source/list

http://code.google.com/p/closure-compiler/source/list

http://code.google.com/p/closure-library/source/list

Their development is very much insular. That's not to say it's a poor idea to depend on these products, but they don't compare to projects like Python with formal processes for revisions (PEP) or at least some discussion.

It would be nice if Google maintained mirrors on Github and accepted pull requests and such, but I don't see that ever happening.

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> Let's not pretend that Google's open source products in any way follow an open development process.

You said "product", but you should say "project".

If you want to assess the openness of the development process, look at the process itself:

https://code.google.com/p/dart/wiki/Contributing https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/?fromgroups#!...

If code reviews are happening in the open and there's a process to bring new contributors on board, that's a great start. This early in the game, you can't expect random members of the open source community to start contributing more than a dedicated team at Google.

> It would be nice if Google maintained mirrors on Github and accepted pull requests and such, but I don't see that ever happening.

Oh? http://github.com/google https://github.com/dart-lang

Also, FWIW on the Go project we have more than 300 non-Google contributors and a solid core of dedicated committers. https://code.google.com/p/go/source/list

> It would be nice if Google maintained mirrors on Github and accepted pull requests and such, but I don't see that ever happening.

Actually, external contributors John Evans and Ladislav Thon submitted and landed patches via github.

https://chromiumcodereview.appspot.com//10168022 https://chromiumcodereview.appspot.com//10166019

Not all of the code is on github but many libraries are. Web ui is developed via github. See here for a full list:

https://github.com/dart-lang/

I really don't understand why people insist that "open" must mean a project is open to every and all random contributions from people outside the project. The source code is there for you to use as you please. If you want your ideas committed to the mainstream you have to persuade the people in charge.

I have to wonder what agenda drives people to claim that this is not "in any way" an open development process.

Actually, I wish Dart were a little less open and had more of a directed focus. Some one like a Linus needs to step in once in awhile and say "you're wasting your time talking about that feature because it's never going to happen."

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